a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to golf course maintenance, especially golf greens, and more particularly providing a tool which can conveniently be used to repair divots and other damaged portions of the golf green.
b) Background Art
One of the problems in maintaining a smooth surface on golf greens is the formation of divots that can be made when a golf ball impacts the surface of the green. In such cases, the impact of the golf ball forms the indentation and also displaces the underlying ground material and sod layer laterally and downwardly. To repair such divots, there has been devised a tool which is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,829 B1. This tool comprises an elongate member, which in one embodiment is a shaft of a golf club, with a golf green repair member at the end face of the handle of the golf club. The tool comprises a fork member extending upwardly from the handle of the golf club. To repair the divot, the golf club is inverted and the fork member is pressed into the ground at the location of the divot an adjacent compression surface engages the surround raised surface and reposition the underlying displaced ground, and also move the sod cover back toward its original position.
Another defect in the golf green requiring maintenance is where there is a small patch of dead or deformed grass cover (or absence of the same) or a soft spot where the ground material has been either displaced or somehow deformed. These are commonly repaired by the use of the coring tool where a cylindrical cutting edge having a central recess is pushed into the ground at the location of the defect, with the sod and/or ground material at the defect location entering up into the recess of the coring tool. Then, the sod and/or ground material that ha accumulated in the coring tool can be removed in some manner.
Also, when these tasks (as noted immediately above) are performed, it then becomes necessary to smooth out the green surface in the area of the repair.
The embodiment of the present invention is designed to provide a convenient method and tool to accomplish these tasks more effectively.